Regional FAO bulletin highlights food safety issues

The latest edition of a regional bulletin has highlighted food safety and the need to improve the situation.

The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region includes Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The second quarter bulletin, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), focused on food safety challenges, strategies, and actions.

Despite the region’s food safety management systems, consumers face a high risk of exposure to contaminated food and foodborne diseases due to factors such as a tropical climate and the use of unsafe water supplies for irrigation and washing food. Also, weak infrastructure, including storage, roads, and cold chains, contributes to the rise in food spoilage, which is expected to worsen with climate change.

FAO efforts

The brief states there is a lack of coordination among sectors working on food safety, and limited capacity for risk assessment and science-based approaches. The shortage of quality data is a barrier to adopting risk-based preventive systems and effective risk management.

A study by FAO to map food safety and quality in the NENA region has identified several factors that contribute to food safety challenges, such as inadequate knowledge of good agricultural and husbandry practices among producers; excessive use of chemicals and drugs during food and animal production; insufficient controls, and a lack of awareness in the supply chain.

Water scarcity has emerged as a challenge due to rapid population growth and climate change. Other issues include pesticide overuse, antibiotic residues, contamination of mycotoxin, and food adulteration.

FAO is also working on a report covering various components of the national food control system, such as the requirements of authorities that create or issue regulations, develop standards, accreditation, certification, inspection, testing, risk assessment and metrology, as well as their involvement and responsibilities in food control and enforcement.

Five priority areas were identified, including reinforced control over primary food production, promotion of food safety and control management, and recognition of the significance of an integrated data management system for preparedness and response to outbreaks and emergencies.

Recent food safety-related events in the region include the third Annual Food Safety and Nutrition Summit for GCC countries in Qatar in May 2src24. In April in UAE, there was a conference on combating food fraud. FAO hosted a workshop and training session in June to strengthen food safety assessment practices. Also, in June, World Food Safety Day was marked with the help of the WHO regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean.

Calls for data

In other news, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for data on lead in spices, dried bark, and dried culinary herbs.

Data on the occurrence of lead in these products should cover the past ten years and country of origin to help assess geographic representativeness. Submissions must be made by Oct. 31 and uploaded to the WHO Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) database.

Another call is for data on tropane alkaloids’ occurrence in food and feeds at different production stages. Tropane alkaloids are secondary plant metabolites divided into three major groups: hyoscyamine and scopolamine, cocaine, and cysteine.

Data should include the name and which group the tropane alkaloid belongs to, be from the last ten years, and list the country of origin to help with geographic representativeness. Submissions should also indicate the stage of sampling. The deadline is also Oct. 31.

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News,&nbs